All Chapters of Beneath His Isolation: Chapter 11 - Chapter 15

The morning light filtering through my small window in the east wing was pale and cold, carrying the quiet stillness that always seemed to rest over Hawthorne Estate before the sun fully rose. I hadn't slept well. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept thinking back to the kitchen—to the heavy silence of the night, the faint aroma of honey, cinnamon, and rich tea, and the sight of Kent sleeping peacefully at the table. The contrast was stark, seeing the man playing the saddest tunes on the piano, before witnessing him sleeping so peacefully on a hard wooden kitchen table.Mr. Vance’s words echoed in my head like an unwritten rule: “He doesn’t sleep often, so just let him be”. I thought a lot about what he said, and how he said it as I was falling in and out of sleep for the night. Maybe it was because he rarely spoke to me in that way, or I was just curious about how terrible Master Hawthorne's sleep could be.By the time I made my way down to the kitchen, Agnes was already at the hearth,

Supper that night was subdued. Word had traveled through the servants' hall the way it always did in that house, murmur to murmur, hand to hand, and even Thomas let his usual stories go untold. Arthur kept glancing at the door, as though the elder Mr. Hawthorne might materialize through it that very evening, letter or no letter.I didn't have much appetite myself. I kept thinking of Kent at that wall, refolding a letter he hated rather than burning it, because apparently even the things that hurt him were things he couldn't quite bring himself to lose.So when Agnes handed me the tea tray again, "Arthur's ankle's still not right, and I won't have Vance hauling trays like some junior footman." I didn't hesitate the way I had the first time.The study door stood ajar when I reached it, firelight spilling into the corridor in a long gold stripe across the floorboards. I knocked anyway, out of habit, or perhaps out of some old instinct that a person deserves warning before you step into w

The west corridor was long, lined with tall arched windows that looked out over the wild garden where Kent had kept his mother’s roses alive. I held my dusting cloth tightly in my hand, my heart hammering an unsteady rhythm against my ribs.“You don’t want to marry someone you don’t love.”“No... I don’t.” His voice kept echoing in my head, soft and heavy with a vulnerability he so rarely allowed anyone to see. He had looked at me in those seconds, really looked at me, without the cold mask of the Master of Hawthorne Manor. He was just Kent. A man surrounded by vast wealth and looming stone walls, yet desperately, intensely lonely.I dragged the cloth across the carved mahogany molding of a high wall table, but my movements were on autopilot. My mind remained stuck at the edge of the terrace. I remembered the tired smile that had touched his lips, and the way the shadows in his grey eyes had softened when he admitted his truth to me."You're going to rub the finish right off that wood